On 10/31/2012 6:14 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 7:59 PM, Stephen P. King
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear Cowboy,
One question. Was the general outline that I was trying to
explain make any sense to you? Without being obvious about it, I
am trying to finely parse the difference between the logic of
temporal systems and the logic of atemporal systems - such as the
Platonic Realm - such that I might show that reasonings that are
correct in one are not necessarily correct in the other.
This was not obvious to me, and going over the posts, I see how you're
leaning that way... but why not just say that, then? Don't get me
wrong, I love Joycean labyrinths as much as the next guy, but if the
topic is on some level tending towards sincerity, then I don't see the
benefit "in not being obvious". Then again, I'm a Captain Obvious
type. Should get the shirt.
Hi Cowboy,
I am dyslexic, this colors/flavors everything I write....
One problem that I have discovered (I thank Brent for bringing
this up!) is that in our reasoning we set up constructions - such
as the person on the desert island - that blur the very
distinction that I am trying to frame. We should never assume
temporal situations to argue for relations that are atemporal
unless we are prepared to show the morphisms between the two
situations.
Isn't this already physical framework when you seem to be arguing for
time as primitive ("n incompatible with comp to begin with, after
which you seek to carve out a distinction, when you've already mixed
at the base?
My argument is that it is impossible to 'derive" Becoming from
Being, but we can derive Being from Becoming. So why not work with the
latter idea? I am trying to get Bruno to admit, among other things, that
he has to assume a non-well founded logic for his result to work.;-)
Bruno would have us, in step 8 of UDA, to "not assume a
concrete robust physical universe". He goes on to argue that
Occam's razor would demand that we reject the very idea of the
existence of physical worlds given that he can 'show' how they can
be reconstructed or derived from irreducible - and thus
ontologically primitive - Arithmetic 'objects' {0, 1, +, *} that
are "operating" somehow in an atemporal way.
UDA does not contradict itself here. Restraints on processing power,
on memory and print capacities, implying time as some illusion
emanating from eternal primitives, don't exist when framed
non-constructively, more like sets of assignments, rather than
operations in your sense, by which you seem to mean "physically
primitive operations" on par with ontologically primitive arrow of
time. Isn't this like cracking open the axioms, and then complaining
that the building has cracks in it?
There are simply a pile of concepts that are just assumed without
explanation in any discussion of philosophy/logic/math. My point is that
a theory must be have the capacity of being communicable ab initio for
it to even be considered. When I am confronted with a theory or a
"result" or an argument that seems to disallow for communicability I am
going to baulk at it!
We should be able to make the argument run without ever appealing
to a Platonic realm or any kind of 'realism'.
It's hard for me to see bets being made without some
cash/investment/gap of faith on the table.
Sure.
In my thinking, if arithmetic is powerful enough to be a TOE and
run the TOE to generate our world, then that power should be
obvious. My problem is that it looks tooo much like the
'explanation' of creation that we find in mythology, whether it is
the Ptah <http://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/ptah.html> of ancient
Egypt or the egg of Pangu
<http://www.livingmyths.com/Chinese.htm> or whatever other myth
one might like. What makes an explanation framed in the
sophisticated and formal language of modal logic any different?
Nothing, at its base. Appearances and looks can deceive, as numbers
can too.
Would this not make that deception something in our understanding
and not the fault of numbers? After all, numbers are supposedly the
least ambiguous of entities!
I agree 1000000000% with your point about 'miracles'. I am
very suspicions of "special explanations' or 'natural conspiracies'.
Same here. My point with humanism + natural sciences, including
standard model, is that you have to be straight about your wager:
there's my magic primitive right there, warts and all.
Its deceiving to, on the one hand assert "no miracles" whatsoever, and
then ask for it at the instant of Big Bang. "Human" in this sense is
both deceptive through error and useful for power.
I think that we are too eager for explanations and are willing to
play fast and lose with concepts so long as we can hand wave problems away.
(This comes from my upbringing as a "Bible-believing
Fundamentalist" and eventual rejection of that literalist mental
straight-jacket.) As I see things, any condition or situation that
can be used to 'explain' some other conceptually difficult
condition or situation should be either universal in that they
apply anywhere and anytime or are such that there must be a
particular configuration of events for them to occur. This
principle (?) applies to everything, be it the Big Bang initial
state/singularity or consciousness.
One point about the Big Bang. It seems to me that if we are
considering conditions in our current physical universe that
involve sufficiently small scales and/or high enough energies that
there should be the equivalent to the Big Bang initial conditions,
thus the Big Bang should be considered as an ongoing process even
now and not some epochally special event.
You argue both comp ("universal, anywhere, eternal") and physically
primitive universe ("current physical universe", "ongoing process" etc).
It seems to me that we need both to come up with ontological theories!
That's why I ask above why you burn your money before you put it on
the (comp) table and claim the game is rigged? Just because "eternal
is foundation", doesn't imply that process isn't possible on some
higher level. Your alluding to mysticism points towards different ways
you can frame temporal and "atemporal" systems. There's not "a
difference", there are many, which is perhaps a fruitful avenue of
inquiry.
I do agree with you on the straight-jacket problem. But extreme
limitation is also liberating.
Freedom from is not freedom to.
Cowboy Obvious
--
--
Onward!
Stephen
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